Wednesday, April 25, 2007

The Iowa Legislature is close to adjournment, but they still haven't dealt with the critical issue of commercial property tax relief. Some of our small businessmen in the area really need that relief, so I hope the Legislature doesn't pass a quick bill just to get rid of a thorny problem.

All those bills they've been passing are adding up on the bottom line, so I'm wondering how our legislators plan to pay the bills. The added cigarette tax can't pay for everything.

For the U.S. Congress, Governor Mitt Romney has called on our Congressmen to re-impose a three-fifths (60%) supermajority requirement to raise taxes. Sounds good for the nation, and sounds good for Iowa!

Sunday, April 22, 2007

It looks like the Maquoketa city budget keeps getting worse, with no deal in sight for the arc. With the YMCA, the maintenance payments to keep the crew working on the arc seems to be coming out of the city reserves. I wonder, can a city go bankrupt? I will still say that mayor Messerli is not to blame for this, he warned them not to do this and they went ahead anyway.

One reason I am supporting Duncan Hunter for president is he brought me to realize that NAFTA was a bad deal. As conservatives we are for limited government, but limited government can take on different meanings. Certainly it can be argued that government is too large of a percentage of our nation's wealth. A nation that was built on the arsenal of freedom, building and maintaining the United States military, also with the ability to feed ourselves through farming. Since NAFTA, all of that has changed. We now have to get many of our components from China to build our equipment we use to defend ourselves, and we are importing more and more of our food every year, from South America and Canada. in other words, the private sector of our economy has been shrinking, to where it is being dominated by government, and we spend more time every year trying to pay for government. To put it bluntly, we have reached the limit of our ability to pay for all of this and the only way to increase the incomes necessary to support our current government services is bring back the industrial and agricultural base. I think if we do this we will see a great change in Maquoketa's city budget.

Our Soup and Sandwich Supper Friday night was a great success. We had a great audience of people from Jackson County and neighboring counties alike. The crowd got a chance to listen to Leon Mosley, Steve Rathje and Jim Gilmore, who all gave good speeches. I want to thank all of those who spoke as well as those who attended. I also want to give special thanks to Greg Grant for agreeing to be the auctioneer for our bake sale, and to Ken Marburger for taking on the huge task of food planning and preparation. I also want to thank those who helped with the food preparation and decorating, you know who you are!

Earlier in the day, Mitt Romney also visited a crowd at Flapjack's in Maquoketa. Unfortunately, I myself was unable to attend. After talking to several people, we concluded that this was likely the first time we have ever had two Republican Presidential Candidates in Jackson County on the same day. This is an exciting time for us in Jackson County, and we hope to have many more appearances by Presidential candidates in our county in the upcoming months.

The Iowa Senate this week passed Senate Bill 596 (also called the “iTunes Tax”) that will impose the 5 percent state sales tax on all downloaded songs, videos, ringtones and audio books. The bill was passed on a party line vote, with Democrats in favor and Republicans against. I am sure a lot of people in the general public at first glance will look at this legislation and say, “5 cents per song? Big deal!”. Well, it is. Five cents per song is not a huge amount of money, and that is exactly the mindset that the Democrats in our State Senate want you to have. This legislation remind me of the plot of the movie Superman III. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie, the character played by Richard Pryor creates a computer program that takes the fractions of a cent left over from bank transactions and deposits those fractions of a cent into a dummy account. Over time, the account would grow quite large because of the large number of transactions processed. The logic is that by siphoning off such small amounts of money in each transaction, it will go unnoticed. Sound familiar?

The fiscal legislation pushed by Iowa Democrats in the House and Senate this year shows what their mindset truly is. They know that pushing for huge tax increases would result in a backlash. Instead, they have set their sights smaller, as in smaller amounts. People take notice when they are asked to cough over hundreds or thousands of dollars in one lump sum. However, most don't think twice about ponying up a few extra cents for everyday purchases, such as music downloads or a pack of cigarettes. Instead of asking for huge amounts of money up front, they plan to nickel and dime us to death.

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Well what can i say had quite an experience this week with duncan hunter, he is deffinently a plain blunt guy, after dinner and a long visit with him i am sure he is a genuine candidate for our parties nomination, he points out and quite accurately that he was against nafta to begin with and it has been a terrible drag on the middle class, and has led to an increasing vulnerabilty for our country as far as defense goes. To look at his issues check out gohunter08.com. You say what does national defense, and bringing back american jobs have to do with Maquoketa? I think our local economy has not been the same since they closed down caterpillar there were alot of people who worked there from this town and they moved on when the plant moved, and the jobs that replaced it did not fill the need of allowing a family to purchase a home. I think duncan is going to rereaganize this party and i am proud to support him. P.S. the rule of you see my guy i will see yours still applies and i am looking forward to the 20th. Thanks to everyone who attended, and duncan will be back if you missed his visit and i am sure that when you meet him that you will find that like his national co chair chuck yeager he has the right stuff. tim grover the plain blunt guy

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Last Saturday I joined several other GOP women from the First District for their spring Women's Club conference in Dubuque. Among the speakers was Bill Northey, Iowa's Secretary of Agriculture. He gave us a lot of interesting information about the ethanol/biodiesel industry. One of the most important facts he gave us is that the ethanol industry was started around 20 years ago by a group of farmers. No government mandate! Ethanol got its start by farmers with a vision to grow the markets for their crops. They have been so successful that corn is now a decent price, and farmers plan to plant more corn this season.

Since Secretary Northey is our top elected state official, he gets a lot of attention, and justly so. He maintains a busy schedule and seems to communicate easily with the public, farm groups, businessmen, bankers, etc. He's a great representative for our Party. I can easily see him elected to higher office.